Steve Tildon works on a trestle platform which construction workers will walk 600 feet to a water taxi that will ferry them out to the job site. Contractors are preparing for the construction of the new eastern Bay Bridge. PAUL CHINN/S.F. CHRONICLE less

Steve Tildon works on a trestle platform which construction workers will walk 600 feet to a water taxi that will ferry them out to the job site. Contractors are preparing for the construction of the new eastern ... more

Photo: PAUL CHINN

Image 3 of 4

An illustration showing the Bay Bridge's new eastern span. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission

An illustration showing the Bay Bridge's new eastern span. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission

Image 4 of 4

BAY BRIDGE CHRONICLES / First in an occasional series / On the horizon / The Bay Area's next landmark is beginning to rise almost unseen on Oakland's shore

1 / 4

Back to Gallery

Monumental projects often begin in scarcely noticeable ways. Piles of rocks and dirt. Portable construction offices clustered in an out-of-the-way location. A posse of pickups and dusty dump trucks.

And so it goes with construction of the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge, a $2.6 billion project tentatively scheduled to be finished in 2007. Work began in January, more than a dozen years after the Loma Prieta earthquake fractured the bridge and set in motion a decade of controversy over what to do to keep that from happening again.

When it's finished, the eastern bridge will be the Bay Area's newest landmark as well as one of the nation's busiest toll bridges. Designers envision it as a long white line hovering above the bay, punctuated by a soaring single-tower suspension span connecting to the tunnel on Yerba Buena Island.

But so far, there's been little to see -- unless you've been stuck in traffic on the approach to the eastern span incline, or you spend your spare time poking around the Oakland waterfront.

President Trump addresses nation after mass shooting at Florida SchoolWhite House

"Because of the size of the project, you're not going to be seeing a lot of work out there for a while," said Pete Siegenthaler, the state Department of Transportation's supervising bridge engineer and project construction manager.

CREWS AT WORK

But that doesn't mean there's nothing going on. Around and under the existing eastern span -- a workhorse that carries 280,000 vehicles a day -- crews are doing the work that needs to be done before they can start building a bridge.

On the edge of the bay, past the toll plaza and north of the bridge approach, there's a growing mound of rocks and dirt. After it settles for five years, the huge pile will be lowered, smoothed out and become the Oakland landing for the Bay Bridge.

Work on what Caltrans calls the "geofill project" began in February when crews cut down trees at the edge of the bay and posted no-trespassing signs in the water to protect the nearby beds of eel grass, an important spawning and nursery habitat for fish and shrimp.

Booms, fabric netting and the piled rocks known as riprap were installed to prevent the work from stirring up too much muck and muddying the bay waters.

Crews from Gordon N. Ball Inc., the Alamo contractor handling the fill job, have to do their tasks when the tide is out. That has meant odd working hours, at all times of the day and night.

'WE FOLLOW THE WATER OUT'

"Our technique is to work when there's no water," said Hal Stober, the firm's president. "As soon as the tide goes out, we're right there. We follow the water out."

To begin building the pile, workers graded the nearly two-thirds of an acre strip of land, then placed a bed of 50,000 tons of basalt rocks -- plucked from the Lake Herman quarry near Vallejo -- in the bay mud to anchor the coming mound of dirt.

Then they started installing flexible drain pipes among the rocks and mud. The drains are a seismic safety device: The idea is to prevent the soil that will hold up the east end of the span from liquefying in an earthquake.

Should the bayfill shake in a tremor, water will rise through the pipes instead of blending with the soil, said Rick Morrow, a Caltrans engineer. Blending can transform everything into a quivering, watery mess that can cause pavement to crack and structures to fall or collapse.

"The drains allow the pressure to escape in an earthquake," Morrow said.

CHANGE OF PACE

Building the landing pad for the new bridge is a change of pace for Stober and his workers. They're more accustomed to working on such jobs as wetlands restoration and soil improvement.

"It's been challenging," he said. "And it's been exciting for the company. We typically work on lower-profile projects."

When the rocks and drains are in place, dump trucks will haul in tons of gravel, then 70,000 cubic yards of dirt, dump it atop the rocks and drains and pack it into a 12-foot-tall embankment. The work should be completed by this fall.

"Then," said Stober, "it will sit and wait for our partners to finish building the bridge."

Those partners are three of the nation's biggest bridge-building companies - - Kiewit of Omaha, Neb., FCI Constructors of Durango, Colo., and Manson Construction of Seattle -- which banded together to win the $1.04 billion contract for the first, and longest, stretch of the new bridge.

Working under the acronym KFM, the companies will build the skyway portion of the new span -- twin concrete viaducts roughly a mile and a half long.

The side-by-side, five-lane viaducts will sit atop steel supports and will sweep just north of the existing bridge.

SETTING UP SHOP

The first job is to set up shop. Home base for the KFM and Caltrans workers on the new bridge will be old Pier 7, also known as the Burma Road Terminal at the old Oakland Army Base.

The old terminal, a huge paved area with a warehouse and a ramp leading to the bay's edge, is a holdover from the days when cargo was unloaded by hand. It was also the center of a dispute early this year between Caltrans and the city and Port of Oakland, which envisions the area as the site of a hotel and, possibly, an Indian casino.

After several weeks of standoff involving security guards and lawsuits, the dispute was settled, with Caltrans agreeing to lease the land and give it back to the city and port when the bridge is built.

This will be the base camp for the east span construction project, and Caltrans officials have already dubbed it "Camp Kiewit," after the Nebraska firm.

Crews for the contractor have assembled 33 gray modular wooden offices in an office complex. Caltrans is erecting its own adjoining village of 20 or so beige modules. Eventually, the site will house more than 200 workers, from clerical staff to engineers, project managers and construction superintendents.

Chris McKenna, an engineer with KFM, supervised the assembly of Camp Kiewit,

and pronounced it a challenge.

"I've done this before," he said, "but never on this grandiose type of scale."

Like everyone else, though, McKenna is anxious to get to the real challenge:

building a billion-dollar bridge in the middle of the bay, where nearly everyone will see it or use it.

PREP WORK

Bridge construction crews began working in the water in late July, but the small-scale dredging and pile-driving jobs they're doing are only preparatory work to give workers access to the shallow waters where the actual bridge construction will begin.

"This is the work you have to do before you can do the work," said Bob Haus,

a Caltrans spokesman.

For most motorists, the only evidence of that work is the pair of cranes that rise on either side of the Bay Bridge incline.

The crane to the north is part of a dredging vessel that scoops mud from the shallow water, making room for the barges that will haul workers, piles and precast sections of the bridge out to the construction site. The dredged mud is hauled out the Golden Gate and dumped near the Farallon Islands.

The crane on the south is part of a pile-driving operation that's building a temporary access pier that will reach 600 feet into the bay, enabling work crews to board barges.

"It's relatively minor to the overall extent of what we'll be doing the next two to three years," Siegenthaler said. "That's going to be a once-in-a- lifetime experience."

The big work out on the bay probably won't begin until late fall when crews start pounding piles, using the world's largest hydraulic hammers to drive the steel pipes into the bay floor. And early next year, construction should begin on the bridge's signature single-tower suspension span near Treasure Island.

"In a year, year and a half," said Siegenthaler, "all heck is going to break loose out on the bay."

Construction beginning on new Bay Bridge

-- Side view of existing bridge

-- Side view of new east span

-- Overhead views of both bridges and areas where work is now being done

Motorists may not be able to see most of it, but work has begun on the new east span for the Bay Bridge. Crews are dredging to make way for construction barges, building an access pier, creating a staging area and project headquarters, and preparing the area where the bridge will eventually touch down in Oakland.

Source: Caltrans

Chronicle Graphic

The Chronicle / KTVU FOX TWO JOINT PROJECT

This story is a joint project by The Chronicle and KTVU, Channel 2. KTVU's coverage, which has a different perspective on the issue, airs tonight at 10 p. m.